


drifting through the halls with the sunrise

by am_fae



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Era, It was fate (tm), Multi, Pre-Canon, Pre-OT3, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-28 00:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13892586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/am_fae/pseuds/am_fae
Summary: “Two soulmarks is an aberration,” Helena’s aunt tells her. “You’re lucky anyone’s willing to take you.”





	drifting through the halls with the sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> Exactly what it says on the tin.

“Two soulmarks is an aberration,” Helena’s aunt tells her. “You’re lucky anyone’s willing to take you.”

Bohun and Helena are young when they meet. She stares wide-eyed at the treasures he’s brought back – a silver mirror, a carnelian necklace. Cloth. “It’s yours if you want it, dziewczynka,” Bohun says, carelessly generous. But the jewels have gone out of her mind as soon as he began speaking, speaking the words on her right wrist, the words she’s obsessed over since before she could read. He’s like a jewel himself, dark-haired, clothed in reds and blues, older than her but already a hero. His teal-colored eyes meet her black ones curiously, and she sighs and says starry-eyed, too young to bother hiding it, too swept away to remember her aunt’s disapproval: “I’m glad it’s you.”

And they’re thrilled. So lucky to have met, and she is so lucky. Her aunt takes the things he brings her, and he writes her songs instead, intangible gifts to keep her company. He says: “is there something on your other wrist, zozulya?” and Helena, not seeing the surprise in his eyes, responds, not-quite-panicking: “He doesn’t matter,” feels only a twinge of guilt for whatever boy might tell her upon their meeting ‘ _you will allow me to help you’._ “The two of us is all we’ll ever need.”

And when Bohun horrifies her, she becomes cold.

He says: “We were made for each other, zozulya” and he holds out his wrist – his left –

She says, intent to kill: “I’m glad there’s someone else.”

Years later she’s even saying she doesn’t love him. She wishes it were true.

 

On the smooth skin of Jan’s right wrist, just an inch above his sword hand, are the words ‘how can I thank you’ in careful print. The letters of the text, formed carefully, awkwardly, are written in what would be boldface, so thick and dark it’s as if they were cut into the flesh itself. Sometimes his wrist aches for no reason, like an old wound. He doesn’t know why.

On his left, in sloppily penciled Cyrillic, nigh unreadable, are the Ruthenian words: ‘away from the carriage, Lach, if you see the steppe’. Followed, as it were, by a slanted exclamation point: _!_

It’s not much use trying to hide your soulmark in the army, so Jan makes a cursory effort and leaves it at that. There’s often the customary ribbon over his right wrist; putting satin on the left as well would merely cause more suspicion, so he leaves it bare, mostly covered by his sleeve, sometimes noticed, sometimes not. It’s rare that anyone, szlachta or peasant, ends up meeting their soulmate, let alone marrying them – a common reaction among the men is a laughing “you’ve twice as many chances as the rest of us”. Michał, of course, knows of and knows them both. He himself has been cursed with the unluck of a simple ‘good day’ just under his palm: he falls in and out of true love with a new girl every other week.

Michał of course also knows and notices that whenever Jan mentions his soulmates it’s always ‘people’, never ‘women’. Of course, he doesn’t say anything.

 

Bohun forgets who he asked to read him his soulmark. Since, he’s learned to trace each word over in his head: ‘I’m glad it’s you’ is on his left, short and sweet. He studies it in every spare moment – as if Helena’s hand itself had traced those letters, the way she always wrote, fingers fumbling with pen and rare scraps of paper, halting and awkward and sincere. (It hurts him now like a knife to the heart.) On his right, in swooping, elegantly scribbled italics, is what seems like an entire paragraph of invective: ‘why do you press on me with your horse, and dig your eyes into me? If it’s dark, I can strike a light, and if the road’s too narrow, get off it’

What did it mean to have two soulmarks? He thought it was natural until suddenly he knew it wasn’t.

There was a whole science to it, an entire trade in interpretations. He’d been told that the darkness of the script on his right meant deep feeling, and that it meant bitterness, and everything in between. He’d been told that the thickness of Helena’s four words meant that she was surely the one for him – and of course he’d been told that he could only ‘choose’ one: one was real and the other a mistake.

When Bohun met Helena, he couldn’t even _imagine_ loving anyone else.

There was an entire trade in interpretations, and this was how he met Horpyna.

“It’s not as odd as you think,” she’d shrugged. And, holding up her blank wrists: “Two is better than none, right?”

He must have looked surprised.

“Of course they’re both really your soulmates,” she said and shrugged again. “Better luck to you.”

 “It’s a mistake,” he said darkly, convinced but desperate. “I’ve met the girl whose words are on my left, we’re each other’s, and I could never love anyone besides her, not if I lived a thousand years and more.”

And Horpyna _laughed_. “Maybe so, sokół,” she said. “Maybe so. But there are no mistakes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please forgive me ignoring vocative case among other botched language things (And... pretend your favorite Wołodyjowski ship from this or later books actually fits into this system because I could not resist making him suffer this way?)
> 
> Title is from Florence + the Machine's "Delilah" - my Most Preferred ot3 song!
> 
> (excuses to tie ribbons on Jan go here)


End file.
